You’ve come to the right place!
So you’re trying to upload files over to your Reach fileshare and you end up getting this dreaded message.
"The name of the creator of this file is not allowed on Xbox LIVE."
While it is a bad sign, it may be easily corrected!
There is a common misconception when it comes to these issues. Some believe that you received that message due to Reach having a “secondary” word filter that disallowed your gamertag from uploading to your File Share. In fact, I thought that was the case.
It turns out that there is no such thing as a secondary filter on Halo: Reach. Every possible piece of metadata gets screened by the Xbox LIVE Filter, which is maintained by the Xbox LIVE Enforcement Team. This has been verified by Bungie staff members Achronos, and JonnyOThan, twice.
Now you may be thinking, “But Unreal! I created this gamertag and I didn’t have any problems with the name before!” Which is a common case when it comes to these issues.
Unfortunately, as Achronos puts it…
> The problem is that XBL regularly adds random stuff to the filter. While they grandfather in existing gamertags that violate the filter, that doesn’t help for the Reach fileshare.
Essentially, strings are added to the Xbox LIVE Filter all the time. However there are cases where, although the Enforcement Team had good intentions, gamertags end up “getting in the crossfire” and have issues such as this.
Changing your gamertag is a fix that will allow you to upload to your File Share once again, but what if, for whatever reason, you don’t want to?
Well you can go the Xbox Forum Support (Link) and post a thread over there explaining your case. The support team over there may take a look at your post and if necessary investigate your issue.
Well, there have been cases (1, 2) where people did just that and got exactly what they wanted. Their gamertags in question were able to once again upload to their File Share without any issues!
Now, there are no guarantees that contacting Xbox Forum Support will end up having a happy ending and odds are that they will let you know if that is the case.
But (and this will count as a tl;dr), before you spend 800 Microsoft Points to change your gamertag and resolve your issue, contact Xbox Forum Support first and have them investigate.
To end this post, here’s relevant Penny Arcade comic originally posted by JonnyOThan over at HBO.
Good luck!